Those Who Are Wearing Flowers
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Those who dance in autumn might still dance crowned with flowers. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Those Who Are Wearing Flowers

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Warnings: **Fluff? Almost PWP

**Rating: **R

**Wordcount: **2400

**Summary: **Those who dance in autumn might still dance crowned with flowers.

**Author's Notes: **The title comes from a line of Sappho's poetry as translated by A. S. Kline.

**Those Who Are Wearing Flowers**

Hermione was the one who had dragged Harry to this celebration, really. It was unlike the usual Ministry parties in that it was outdoors, and supposedly like Beltane even though it was happening at the beginning of autumn, and fallen leaves flurried around Harry as he trudged through the woods, in the middle of this silly hunt that the Ministry had organized for "fun." But it was like all the others in that Harry was bored.

He kicked the leaves up around him, and watched them fall again. He might as well do that, he thought. The leaves were brilliant red and orange, a faded yellow, and already spotted with brown. He had to find a yellow leaf with three spots of brown, according to the list the cheerfully smiling undersecretary who'd organized this thing had given him.

Harry sighed. He didn't think this was any different as a party from the others. He smiled and talked to people he didn't know, who wanted to know him, and thought that watching him eat meant they were intimate with him. He wouldn't have been an Auror if he'd known how much of it was—not even paperwork, but _gossip. _Chattering and trying to get hints of what important people in the Ministry would do next and hearing tedious tales of love affairs in return.

Harry had never had a love affair. He'd dated Ginny, and he'd dated a few other virtuous and boring people. He could like them, he could talk to them, he could enjoy joking with them, but passion seemed to be beyond him. He wondered idly if it was because of the Dursleys, but if it was, there was probably nothing he could do about it.

He picked up one of the yellow leaves, staring at it. It had four brown spots, though, no good. He tossed it away and looked up again.

A vision was walking towards him.

Harry almost drew his wand before his mind caught up with his wavery, uncertain eyes. He dropped his hand back to his side and swallowed. This was only someone who had come to attend the party, like him. It had to be.

But Harry didn't know why Draco Malfoy, who was the only person Harry knew with a face and hair and hands that pale, had flowers entwined round his head, and why he reached up now and then and adjusted the crown as if it falling off would be the worst thing that could happen.

Malfoy looked up and caught his eye. His body tightened. For a second, he stood there with the leaves falling past him, and Harry regretted that Malfoy had seen him. He would turn and vanish into the woods, and Harry's sense of a vision would go with him.

But then Malfoy gave him a slight, sly smile, and walked up to him, his feet crushing and whispering among the leaves. Harry was sure Malfoy walked more quietly than Harry had. Then again, Ron had told him when they were sneaking around on Auror missions, a charging bull walked more quietly than Harry did.

Malfoy came to a stop and bowed to Harry, one hand locked on his flower crown. "Like what you see?" he whispered.

Harry stared at him, at his bowed head and the pale hair wavering out and around the flowers. He could see purple ones, and the edges of golden petals, and the bright stems of others that were hidden under the surface layer. He reached out and touched Malfoy's head.

The hair and the petals were both so soft that he couldn't tell what was flowers and what wasn't.

He pulled his hand back with a little shake of his head. "I don't know what you're wearing them for," he said. "Or why you're here, unless you came to the party like me, and your list told you to find flowers."

Malfoy looked up at him, eyes intense, without raising his head. He didn't say anything, though, which meant Harry felt compelled to go on.

"But I like it," Harry whispered. "I like the way you look wearing those flowers." He might have said other things, things that would embarrass them both, but instead, he just looked at Malfoy and shook his head.

Malfoy surged up and grabbed him around the waist, bearing him down and backwards. Harry grabbed his wand again, wondering if this had been a trap and he had fallen for it the moment he let himself be disarmed.

But Malfoy didn't try to bash his head in or bespell him or even take his wand away. Instead, he kissed Harry, mashing his lips into his, and then following it with his tongue, as though he could make Harry open his mouth by force.

Harry cried out, and his arms fell open at the same time as his lips did. Malfoy's kiss was immediately gentler, his tongue lapping around his as though he was encouraging Harry to kiss him back instead of yield.

To _participate_.

And the leaves rustled and whispered around their bodies, and that ridiculous crown of flowers had slipped down around Malfoy's ears the next time Harry looked at him, and warmth was rising up from his groin and flooding down from his heart at the same time. When they met in the center of his chest, searing, Harry kissed back.

He could feel his breath coming short; no matter how he tried, he couldn't get more, his lungs wouldn't _expand. _As they landed in the leaves, Malfoy's flowers drifted down around them, and their soft petals brushed Harry's lips. He pushed them aside, and Malfoy picked them up and laid them aside. Their colors glowed against the orange and red.

Harry's heart was hammering. His skin was sweaty. He raised a hand and cupped it around the nape of Malfoy's neck, bringing his head down so that Harry was the one kissing _him _this time, his happiness still leaping and singing.

Maybe this was passion. All Harry really knew was that it was different than anything he'd felt before, and he wanted it.

Malfoy leaned back on his heels and made a little motion with his hand. Harry smiled, interpreting it the right way, and started to strip his clothes off.

It was a long process; he kept fumbling with the buttons and laces because he didn't want to look away from Malfoy's eyes, the way they kept widening, or his softened face and his throat bobbing where he swallowed. When Malfoy reached out and let his hand linger on Harry's leg where he'd pulled his sock off, Harry had to tilt his head back and bite his tongue to stay still.

But Harry finally shrugged off everything, and Malfoy was still dressed, kneeling there, looking at him, rapt. Harry clasped his hands behind his back and arched his shoulders, showing himself off. It was a thing he'd never wanted to do in front of anyone before. He wasn't that impressive, wasn't the broad-shouldered god that he knew some of the people he'd dated had wanted.

But he wasn't bad, either. His skin was bright, and the scars he had marked it but didn't mar it, and his chest was broad enough for all the burdens he had to carry. He knew it from the way Malfoy's eyes went dark as he studied Harry.

Then he reached out and put the crown of flowers back on his own head.

Harry stared, thinking Malfoy meant to leave. He seemed so scared of the flowers being crushed, and he probably wouldn't want to have sex with Harry while he was wearing them.

But instead, Malfoy bent over and kissed him again, long and slow this time, hot and so wet that Harry could feel it spilling down his chin. Harry reached out in response, to take Malfoy's neck back into his hands, and deepen the kiss, while Malfoy came to kneel carefully in his lap, head bowed so that his crown wouldn't slip off.

Harry gasped as Malfoy's hand came down and worked around his cock, so slick that Harry wondered what Malfoy had smeared it with. Maybe just the petals of the flowers, some of which were falling around them, crushed, after all.

But then Harry lost interest in the question, because Malfoy's hand was soft and warm, but the cock poking Harry in the hip wasn't. It flared with heat, and it was hard enough to be uncomfortable. Harry squirmed around and reached for it.

Malfoy made a soft, guttural noise and arched his neck when Harry touched him, his head falling back for a second while his lips closed. Still his eyes were open and fastened on Harry's face, and still he reached out and ran a curious finger down Harry's chest, tracing the mark that the locket had left on him. Harry looked down at it, a little ragged sunburst of skin under one of Malfoy's faintly pink nails.

He smiled, and twisted his hand around Malfoy in response.

Malfoy grunted and moaned, and Harry groaned back in response. Their voices mingled, and then fell silent. There was no choice about that, Harry remembered later; it just happened. Unplanned, but perfectly in tune.

They rocked, hips jamming into each other's, eyes on each other's faces. The warmth all around Harry seemed more like the product of summer than autumn. He panted at Malfoy, and his tongue stuck out to catch a falling drop of sweat from Malfoy's arm. Malfoy jerked and sighed.

The final jerk was the last one, at least for Harry. He felt himself coming in a hot rush, his head sagging back on his neck as he cried out in bliss. But he remembered to pull and twist, and draw his fingers towards the head of Malfoy's cock in a single long run that made Malfoy shiver on top of him.

He came, too, and when Harry was recovering from his own climax, he returned in time to feel the little shudders of wetness against his hand. He had to feel them through Malfoy's trousers, but at the time, that didn't seem to matter. Harry lifted his hand to his mouth and licked his palm, and Malfoy's eyes did shut at that.

Malfoy stood up, and stood looking down on him. Harry reclined on his elbows and stared back. He wondered if Malfoy would say something about this, or tell him to stay away, or at least tend to the prominent wet spot on the front of his trousers.

Malfoy finally did move, but it was to take the crown of flowers from his head and hold it out to Harry. Harry hesitated, then reached up and accepted it. The purple petals of the asters rubbed gently against his fingers.

He placed it gravely on his head.

Malfoy inclined his own head and smiled at Harry. Then he turned and disappeared in the other direction. Harry stood up slowly, feeling the slither of leaves against his bare skin. His clothes were nearby. He reached for them.

And found a yellow leaf on the ground with three brown spots, the same one he needed for his list.

Harry was smiling as he got dressed.

* * *

"Harry! Where were you?"

Hermione's question seemed loud and intrusive after the silence of the woods. Well, silence if you didn't count the sounds he and Malfoy had made when they brushed against the leaves, and the ones they made when they came, Harry corrected himself conscientiously inside his head.

He smiled at Hermione, though, because inside his head was where that encounter had to stay, and said something else. "Where was I? Trying to find the items on my list. Some of them were hard," he added, holding up a piece of perfectly grey bark with white stripes. "Whoever thought up this list ought to have to look for those things."

Hermione smiled at him and ushered him towards the rest of the people standing around the table in the middle of the woods and talking. Harry shook his head a little. Even out in the middle of the forest, they were going to do the exact same things they would if they were stuck in the Ministry. He felt a little thrill to know that _he _hadn't, that he had found a way to rebel against that unchanging routine.

"What _are _you wearing?"

Harry felt himself flush a little. He'd come into a beam of sunlight, and Hermione had just noticed the crown of flowers. He didn't snatch it off, however, but shrugged. "Just something I found," he said, and then turned and began to walk towards the Minister, while someone else caught Hermione's attention.

She would probably ask him about it later. Harry hadn't decided what to tell her yet. The truth was out of the question, though. He was going to hold that to him, a secret taste of passion that couldn't happen anywhere outside these woods, this autumn day crowned with autumn flowers. At least he knew passion was possible now, and that he could try and find it again.

Then he saw Malfoy, talking with someone Harry didn't recognize on the other side of the group. Malfoy turned and caught his eye.

He didn't flinch or flush or turn away again, the way Harry had thought he would. His eyes grew a little lazy, instead, and he inclined his head the way he had to Harry when he was bowing above him. His gaze flickered to the flower crown, and he raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for the moment when Harry would try to snatch it off and bluster.

Harry raised his chin a little and looked back at him. The crown stayed steadily in place, although a few other people had noticed it now and were staring at him.

Malfoy flashed him the tiniest of smiles, and turned back to his conversation.

Harry turned to his own with the Minister, his heart bounding, ignoring the puzzled smile at his flower crown and silent invitation to explain. Perhaps there was a chance that he could taste that passion outside the woods after all.

**The End.**


End file.
